Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno has confirmed the deaths of three press workers kidnapped along the country’s conflictive border with Colombia.
Moreno spoke yesterday after a 12-hour deadline ended with the captors failing to meet his demands they demonstrate the hostages were still alive or face a military strike.
He said the government has obtained new information that confirmed the journalists were killed. On Thursday a Colombian TV network said it obtained gruesome photos purporting to show the bodies of the three men.
The three employees of Ecuador’s El Comercio newspaper were taken hostage three weeks ago by a holdout faction of the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) while investigating a rise in drug-fuelled violence along Ecuador’s northern border.
Moreno was in Lima for the Summit of the Americas, which began yesterday, when the grisly photographs emerged, prompting him to urgently return to Quito to handle the crisis.
On April 3, Colombia’s RCN television aired a 23-second video showing the trio wearing chains with locks around their necks, in what was the first proof of life.
One of the hostages appealed to Moreno to help secure their release.
In response, the government pledged to do “everything possible and impossible so that they return safe and sound,” a presidential spokesman said.
In the video, the unidentified captors said they would release the hostages if Ecuador stopped helping Colombia fight the insurgents.
The journalists’ kidnapping has alarmed and unsettled Ecuador, with media saying it was the first such abduction in the country in three decades.
As the latest deadline loomed, Moreno huddled in crisis talks with his Cabinet as a top-level delegation was flying over from Bogota, led by Colombian Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas, who was accompanied by top military and police officials.
Both Moreno and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos had agreed to wait for contact from the kidnappers before taking “forceful” action.
Ecuador’s Communications Minister Andres Michelena said the delegation would be involved in preparing “joint operations,” without giving further details.
According to the Ecuadoran military, the dissident group believed to be behind the abduction is led by a rebel called “Guacho,” an Ecuadoran in his 30s who had served as a rebel in the Farc for 15 years, specialising in explosives, drug smuggling and financing.
The group is thought to number 70 to 80 people and is involved in cross-border drug trafficking through the jungle.